Category Archives: The Evidentialism Files

The Beauty of Congestion

 

Imagine you call a friend, just to see what’s up.

You ask what she’s doing. She explains she’s sitting in a leather chair, sipping almond mocha coffee, jamming to this haunting tune by Chris Cornell.

You’re envious, right? Now, put her in bumper to bumper traffic.

You’re so glad you’re already at work, right?

But why? When it isn’t urgent, when little is actually on the line, why is a traffic jam as loathed as a root canal? Particularly when we know we’ll come across it, which is all the time.

I realized this when foul weather forced me to abandon the bike for a cage. Even a mini clown car like the Fiat feels like a tractor trailer.

Yet I also knew, from zipping by the idle on the bike, that I’d have to face life in the stopped lane. I’m fatally punctual, anyway, so I gave myself more time than I needed. Stopped at Circle K for a Diet Coke. Chose my favorite playlist. And hit the 405.

What a sight. Such anger. Impatience. People cutting me off to get two lengths ahead and slam the brakes? To get where? A cubicle at work? A couch at home? What makes 5 mph such torture?

It was cold, but sunny. I cranked the heat, opened the sunroof, which beheld true daylight, straight to the face. And the song was right — Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman. And I sipped the soda, took a bite of donut, and thought: is this not what we’d like to be doing when we reach our destination? More likely: could what awaits us at the end of this drive be far less enjoyable?

“Beautiful Day” came through Random/Shuffle fate. All I could think is: When you’re in such a rush to get somewhere, how do you see the Santa Monica Mountains in the backdrop?

I’m sure I’ll forget this the next time I’m five minutes late for dinner. I shouldn’t, but that zen moment is as fleeting as an open highway.

What truly provoked such peacenik blathering was the sight when I returned home. I was in the drive-through (which should be called the Scott-through) on Balboa Blvd. when I saw a Breaking Bad-style RV, with these words spray-painted in black — not stenciled or straight, but as if the RV had been tagged:

GET OFF THE ROAD OR OFF YOUR PHONE!

He barely fit all the words across the length of the mini home. Stranger still: all the windows were open, including the back. There, a cute, scruffy mutt (perhaps a shepherd mix) with a red bandana sat in the seat, furthest back, simply pant-grinning and looking forward. Not lolling his head out, not sniffing the world as it passed. Just beamed forward, as if aware he’d scored a chauffer.

And I wondered. What is this, this form of road rage? Did you get hit by a guy talking on his cell phone? Do you hate technology, like Saul’s brother? Did you accidentally sext your boss?

Regardless, it seemed an odd mix of warmth and venom. As if to say, “Hey, you on the phone! Fuck you! And say hi to my dog, Bob Barker!”

And I don’t think he understood how easily anger can undercut your message. All I could think in the car was, “God I wish I had my camera phone.”

Make It Quick, or the Pinkie Gets It

Always have a set of ransom demands.

One, it forces you to grapple with life’s inequities and mysteries, to face the unseen-yet-apparent, to reveal how you view the world and, more importantly, how you’d right it.

Two, you never know.

Hence:

  • Bring back the following words, in the following context: “swell,” as in ‘That’s great,’ not as in ‘That’s enlarged;’ “sore,” as in ‘I’m sore at you,’ not, ‘I’m sore from you;’ “hoosegow” in place of jail — or anything. (it’s just a kick-ass word.)
  • Officially declare three a magic number.
  • Invent and make mandatory the front goddamned brake light: Why is it the only angle you can’t see whether a car is slowing down is when it’s coming straight at you?
  • Atheists: admit it’s a faith.
  • Faith: admit it’s a science.
  • Science: make pets outlive us.
  • Add the Prius to the list of douchebag cars, joining BMW’s, Range Rovers and the Hummer H3.
  • Ban seatbelt laws. Americans have the right to be stupid.
  • Change the national anthem to ‘America the Beautiful.’
  • Stop using “impact” as a verb; it’s not.
  • Adjust daylight savings time so regular people care: “jump back” at 6 a.m. on a workday and “jump forward” at 4 p.m. on a workday.
  • Redefine rich. If a) You can buy anything on a restaurant menu or b) You believed you could be anything as a kid; you’re rich.

For every demand that’s not met, a hostage gets it. Beginning with “impact.”

In the meantime, I claim the following words, just because I don’t want them prostituted by the vernacular

“foist”
“shenanigans”
“miscreant”
“goddamn (small g)”

Oops. The gun went off while I pistol-whipped impact. I hope that doesn’t affect life in the hoosegow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU4pyiB-kq0

O Me! O Life! A Verse for the Powerful Play

 

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here, that life exists, and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Am I doing the right thing?”

Not before, nor since, have I asked that question aloud, posed 15 years ago today.

My organs were in. I was flying from New York, on the tick tock clock,  for my double transplant. The doctors prepped me: gown and gurney, hair net and thin blanket. Shivering, cold as hell. Now all that awaited were the new kidney and pancreas down the hall.

I had been waiting more than  year for this moment. A perfect genetic match. A chance. Yet I wasn’t sure that moment. Spencer and Michael had offered their kidneys. My god. Their kidneys. I never told them, but I got two calls that my donor pancreas was in. Tick tock. That we could move forward as soon as a volunteer was ready to be cut.

Twice I told them no. I told them I wanted to wait for the exact genetic match, for both organs, simultaneously. In truth, I was afraid. What if it didn’t work? What if I died on the table? What if Spencer or MIchael died? All because I was unable to deal with my demons?

I was a shitty diabetic. I chose to run from the disease I contracted when I was 14. I barely paid notice to my blood level unless it sank perilously low or soared dangerously high. I chewed sugared gum to fit in with the kids at the basketball court behind Pierce Middle School. They hit up the Good Humor truck every lunch period. I didn’t want to be that one kid who couldn’t chew goddamned bubblegum. I convinced myself that I was like any other kid, that nothing like juvenile diabetes, a disease I’d heard of until I got it, could conquer Ultraman.

Now I’m on the gurney, forced to face the cost of my flight.

“Am I doing the right thing?” I asked my ex-wife, Julie. In all my hubris, I needed reassurance.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if you want to call this off, we can leave here right now.”

Now, I know. It is the right thing. Better to die on the table than of diabetes’ decay, I said, feigning bravery. The real reason I was ready: Finally, after so much running, I realized  I did not face this alone. Over the years, I’ve discovered, that’s the key to facing what appears so frightening, so insurmountable, so entrenched within. That there’s another option besides facing your demons, or not.

You can hunt them. Corner them. Force them into the light and make those motherfucker pay before you finish them off.

If you are afraid of love, love. If you fear faith, believe. If you are frightened of the dark, get up in the middle of night. Don’t turn on the light. Walk to the center of the room, the center of the dark, and challenge the spirits to show themselves, to take their best goddamn shot.

They won’t. That’s the thing about inner demons. They are crafty, malleable, terrific at making you believe they are actual. Undefeated on the field, they will say, and you are but grass to be mowed.

But that’s a lie. They are cowards.

I was a crime writer the first half of my professional career, and saw real monsters. Michael’s brain tumor. Ronald Gene Simmons, who killed 14 relatives over Christmas because he snooped a note that his wife was tired of the abuse and was going to leave for good. Those are monsters materialized. I cried when one took Michael, sighed relief to see the other executed.

Yet how often do we face such demons? How often do we instead convince ourselves that they’ve become so fierce that we’re not up to repelling them? That we…just…can’t.

We can. It is within us, because we created that darkness. Perhaps let it grow out of control until it appeared in control.

However.

Is this not of our own creation? Is it really that impossible to smite that enemy, god-like and vengeful? The bible loves to preach of demons and gods borne outside our world. Adam and Eve were fine until that nasty serpent pulled up in the fruit cart.

Fuck that. Maybe Adam was just jonesing for some fructose. Maybe if he’d faced his own demons instead of blaming one in a tree, we wouldn’t have ever had to say goodbye to Samuel Flegel. Instead, he rests inside me. I carry him, perhaps because of my own demons.

But, on this day every year, he taps me on the shoulder. He is a gentle but literal reminder. I do not walk among the night spirits alone. That he is here, bow at the ready. That my quiver is full, filled with arrows sharpened by Spencer and Michael and those who were always less fearful than I.

Let’s hunt.